This one’s a little off topic, but it was a matter of great personal anxiety this morning so I thought I’d share … in case any of you do something similar.

While puttering around this morning I hit the blog’s admin page and saw an update to the theme I use was available.  I try to keep things up to date, I never know what bug fix or security fix needs to be included (I don’t work on web development professionally and it’s a lot to stay on top of otherwise) so I’m pretty diligent about applying updates.

The item database page is on a separate template so that it can run the scripts necessary for querying the back end database and what not, and as some of you have seen, I have put a half decent amount of time into getting it working.

After applying the theme update, all that was gone.  Let that sink in… gone… As a work in progress I haven’t backed it up anywhere and I’ve been working through a ssh shell and writing the script in vi … no auto backups anywhere.

Did I say gone?  A quick web search revealed I had just been inducted into the “Theme updates delete the folder and install a new copy from a fresh archive” club.  Yes, it deletes the whole damn folder instead of doing some sort of selective update.  Well Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Shepherds … who the hell designs this stuff like that without a warning??

Thankfully my hosting provider does nightly backups and I was able to restore the file from their backup … the guy on the phone used a “teach a man to fish” approach so I’ll be able to do this without the hour long panic attack should it ever happen again.

… and it will …

… because I’ll backup today …

… and tomorrow …

… but once I feel safe again, the files are on their own! :->